PORCH PONDERINGS

Crooked Trees and How They Grew

April 5, A Crooked Forest in West Pomerania in Poland

Who remembers this rhyme?

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
and they all lived together in a little crooked house.

That was the first thing that popped into my feeble brain when I saw those trees. So they are in West Pomerania. Poland. Hmm. Of course I had to go on to the source of all knowledge now, the internet. Seems that West Pomerania is the fifth largest voivodeship, province, of Poland. And a claim to fame of that province, among others, is that crooked forest.

How did it come to be? No one seems to know.

I think it was the crooked man of the rhyme. He needed crooked trees to make his crooked house. And being a man of means, he was able to hire a crew to trim all the trees in the forest and train them to grow in a crooked way.

“But sir, that will take years for those trees to grow crookedly!” the workers complained to the crooked man.

Crooked man leaned his crooked staff and laughed his crooked laugh.

“I have many years to wait. I have nothing else to do. Cut the trees.”

And so the trees were cut. And so the trees grew in a crooked way.

All the trees weren’t cut for the crooked house. Some were left for a meeting place in the crooked forest. Crooked man had many family members. They all were in the West Pomerania area and hoped to some day settle nearby.

But alas, as life would have it, the family members left this earth before they could build their crooked houses. And so, the crooked trees remain to this day.

There is no other proof. Do you have a better story?

W/C. 313